Stripped Raw – Coffin Nails MC California

— What’s left when you strip away the lies? —

Sam. Loyal to the Coffin Nails MC. Lives by his own rules. Weakness: Damsels in distress.

Jolie. In a deeply ambiguous relationship with the Coffin Nails MC. Lives from paycheck to paycheck. Weakness: Bad boys.

As a patched member of the Coffin Nails MC, Sam is finally living the life he was destined for. A life of Harleys, guns, drugs, and eating pussy. A life of brotherhood above all.

When he goes to pick up some pot brownies for the club president’s old lady, he meets a girl so sweet, his inner wolf wants to eat her there and then. What is supposed to be a typical fling, gets damn more complicated when the Coffin Nails decide to involve the pretty blonde baker in their drugs operation.

Jolie has a knack for baking delicious cakes, but when it comes to her taste in men, she is a self-professed failure. After a disastrous relationship, she is still picking up the pieces and working three jobs to manage the financial carnage her ex left her with. The last thing she needs is a hot piece of tattooed hunk stomping into her life. Sam calls her ‘Candy’, but with a talent for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Jolie should be called ‘Trouble’.

To be with Jolie, Sam would have to disclose a secret he kept locked away for years. A secret so raw, that it might destroy his place in the brotherhood he’s fought so hard to be a part of.

Hash brownies. But a job was a job. Jolie had never baked them for sale, only a few times for friends, and that was when she still lived back in Kansas. When she had friends. When she had a boyfriend. When she had a bit of money to spare. She had never imagined herself ending up in this position. Moving to California with Jake was supposed to be a dream come true. They got a cool apartment together (with a pool!), they rented a Jag for a month, basked in the sun, and even got matching tattoos.

Well, life was different now. Now, Jolie was stuck in a run-down apartment, paying off Jake’s debts she stupidly signed for, working three jobs, and despising the mere concept of a boyfriend. To make matters worse, she was on pins and needles, waiting for a delivery of hash from a Coffin Nails drug dealer. If it were up to her, she would have gotten the drugs from her friendly local junkie living down the road, but because the brownies were for a Coffin Nails MC party, the club insisted they give Jolie their own hash.

Only adding to the pile of stress on Jolie’s shoulders was the impending visit of the loan sharks Jake—and Jolie by association—owed money to. All the shitty problems in her life seemed to be coinciding today into a clusterfuck of trouble. The drug dealer was also supposed to bring payment for the brownies, which in turn would be her payment to the loan sharks.

Everything needed to come together at the right time, or she would be screwed. And that is exactly how her life had been for the last few months.

When the doorbell rang, Jolie’s heart skipped a beat, and instead of running to open it, she froze. What if it were Bastian, who she liked to think of as ‘bastard’, or his fucking friend Goldy, the one with freaky gold teeth? She didn’t have the money yet. She had primped herself up, put her long blonde hair in curls, and done all that in case she needed to charm them into giving her a few more days. But she knew that blue eyes and long eyelashes weren’t going to work for much longer. She was beginning to think that Bastian and Goldy were the first Italians she’d ever met who didn’t like blondes. Jolie took a deep breath and pulled the neckline of her dress lower to reveal more cleavage before she opened the door.

Her heart fluttered with relief when she saw the patches of the motorcycle club sewn on a loose leather vest. They were positioned below her eye level, as the man standing at her door wasn’t much taller than her, even if so much broader in the shoulders. His presence took up the whole doorframe, and just as she looked up at his face, rough fingers brushed the upper part of her breasts.

“That’s not in season,” said the man with a slight rasp to his voice, grasping the plastic candy cane pendant she wore on a thin chain around her neck.

Jolie’s skin tingled where he touched her, so she quickly pulled the fabric higher up her neckline. “It goes with my pink dress,” she said and looked up into the guy’s eyes, which were a deep grey framed by long black eyelashes. He was young and handsome, with a short beard and a broad mohawk of no more than a half inch length. A thick septum piercing lying under a shapely roman nose gave him that extra dusting of danger.

He gave Jolie a wide smile. “It goes well with you, Candy,” he said, still hovering his warm hand over her skin.

She swallowed, trying to avoid his gaze, as it was giving her goose bumps. “Um, my business is called Candygirl, but I’m not actually ‘Candy’” She tried to avoid taking a deeper breath, as the guy was still holding his fingers all too close under the pretense of examining her necklace.

The man smirked and pulled on the necklace gently, making Jolie step closer out of fear of the chain breaking. He smelled of an earthy cologne that pulled her close like a powerful magnet. “Well, you look delicious enough to lick.”

The words sobered her up from the lucid dream. “I can’t believe you just said that!” She slapped the candy cane out of his fingers, with her cheeks going hot. “Just give me that stuff, and go.”

The man raised his hands and stepped inside as if it were his own home. “That’s a no-do, princess. It’s my duty to check whether you’re trustworthy,” he said, walking into the small living room/kitchen space cluttered with boxes of stuff Jolie wasn’t ready to let go of.

She didn’t have time for this. Bastian could show his tattooed face at any point. She swallowed, watching the guy’s imposing form move around in her tiny apartment smelling of vanilla cupcakes. “It was one of your guys calling me about this, so I’m guessing he deemed me ‘trustworthy’.” Jolie folded her arms on her chest, now wishing she hadn’t gone all out with the lipstick, eyeliner, and the pink bow in her hair. She discreetly got out of her heeled slippers and pushed them under the table.

The biker walked closer to the beat-up leather sofa and scrutinized it, hands deep in his front pockets. “That’s a lot of boxes,” he said as if he hadn’t listened to her at all. “You selling something, Candy?”

“I adored this book! I love M. Merikan’s writing style–witty, humorous, and always full of life. There’s never a dull moment in her books. Just when you think things might become too serious a bit of humor pops up–like the brothers playing rock paper scissors :)”